class warfare

class warfare

Coming Soon: Means Tested Criminal Penalties?

Wed, 01/13/2010 - 5:38pm | posted by Doug Deal

Switzerland apparently now fines drivers based on their wealth in addition to their offense. A Swiss man was was fined $290,000 for a speeding ticket. Because of his wealth, the basic fine was multiplied by 130 to arrive at the higher figure.

Under Swiss law he was fined for the offence, then had the sum multiplied by 130 to account for his fortune.

The penalty is the highest speeding fine handed out in Switzerland. He was ordered to pay half of it in cash immediately with two years for the rest.

Is a crime committed by a rich man more serious than one committed by someone of more modest means? Should the penalty reflect the relative severity on the individual or should the fine for the same act be the same for all people?

As an analogy, a young man should get a longer prison term than an older man since the sentence would be such a larger percentage of the older man’s life expectancy. The slippery slope of such a principle could one day lead to differential pricing at supermarkets and other entities that perform a service labeled a “right” or “need” by a government. When the prices are all different, dependent on your wealth, what is the point of wealth?

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Top 1% pays more in taxes than bottom 95%

Thu, 07/30/2009 - 11:35am | posted by Jason Pye

New data released by the IRS shows that the tax burden on the top 1 percent of income earners now exceeds the tax burden of the bottom 95 percent.

Scott Hodge at the Tax Foundation says, “To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.”

Tax Foundation Chart

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Census Douses Liberal Claims

Wed, 08/27/2008 - 6:17pm | posted by Shana Kluck

Cato has summarized the 2007 Census data that was released earlier this week. While United Liberty of all political blogs will readily admit there are major problems with our economy - problems that stem from both fundamental policy choices & execution of policy - we need to make sure we do not play into the hands of the raging liberals who exaggerate every problem in society in order to achieve their political goals. Even looking at the situation from a non-ideological and pragmatic viewpoint, there is not any more reason to intervene in the economy today than there was a decade ago.

New Income and Poverty Figures Spoil the Pity Party

The number and percentage of Americans without health insurance actually declined slightly in 2007 compared to 2006. The share without insurance in 2007, 15.3 percent, is actually lower than it was a decade ago.

Median household income is not falling: “Between 2006 and 2007, real median household income rose 1.3 percent, from $49,568 to $50,233—a level not statistically different from the 1999 prerecession income peak.”

The share of households earning a middle-class income of between $35,000 and $100,000 in real 2007 dollars has indeed shrunk slightly compared to a decade ago, but so too has the share earning less than $35,000 a year, while the share earning more than $100,000 continues to rise. The middle class is not shrinking; it is moving up.

The 12.5 percent of Americans living below the poverty line in 2007 was statistically unchanged from 2006, and remains below the 13.3 poverty rate in 1997. The poverty rate has been trending downward since the early 1990s during a time of growing trade and immigration flows.

The Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of income inequality, was .463 in 2007, down slightly from earlier in the decade and virtually the same as it was a decade ago.